Shauna Carlisle, Ph. D., MSW

Shauna Carlisle will use community based learning to teach research methods in partnership with King County Housing Authority (KCHA). The purpose of this research project is to conduct a customer satisfaction program evaluation of 4,000 units within KCHA’s housing portfolio. Undergraduate students in her Approaches to Social Research classes will conceptualize, design, and execute all aspects of the research project including: survey development, data collections, data analysis, and dissemination and presentation of findings to King County Housing Authority. This rigorous course is designed to give students both the theoretical knowledge and hands-on research methods training students will need to execute a well designed research project in the future and to become more critical consumers of research findings. KCHA executives will attend two classes to introduce the scope of the project and again to listen to student presentations and evaluate the research process.

Susan Harewood, Ph. D.

Susan Harewood is using a community based learning approach in developing a graduate course in media and representation. She says that the community based approach will improve student praxis by prompting them to think through the ethical issues of representation defined as ‘standing in for’ and/or ‘making present’ whilst they engage with community organizations to either assist in designing and implementing a community based radical media literacy syllabus or researching media ownership and fairness issues. The students will explore the rewards, challenges and political possibilities of collaboration and community engagement.

Rob Turner, Ph. D.

Project: Improving the Design, Dissemination, Continuity, and Assessment of Community-Based Research by UW Bothell Students in BES 318 and BIS 490

Dr. Turner has been engaging students in community-based research projects for as long as he has been teaching. This reflects his commitment to provide experiential learning opportunities for students that also provide some benefit to the community. In 2010 Dr. Turner will be incorporating community-based research projects in BES 318 – Hydrogeology, BIS 490 – Senior Seminar: Sustainability Research for Community Enhancement, BIS 392 – Water and Sustainability, and BES 303 – Environmental Monitoring Practicum. His ICBLR proposal is to take the community-based projects in these courses to the next level. Specifically, he will collaborate with the ICBLR Steering Committee and fellows to ensure that: 1) student project results are well packaged and well disseminated; 2) plans for continuing research projects and collaborations beyond 2010 are developed; and 3) student learning objectives are defined and their fulfillment assessed, along with community partner satisfaction.

Jin-Kyu Jung, Ph. D.

Jung is proposing a project to bring an understanding of “community” through mapping. Maps can be powerful tools to tell stories about communities in which we live, play, work and engage with other people. It helps us to collect, manage, and particularly ‘visualize’ valuable knowledge about the people and places around us. Most up-to-date digital maps on the web and popular geoportal sites such as Google Map provide us unprecedented power to make and use maps in more sophisticated and creative ways. By taking advantage of these accessible web-based maps, students will explore new understandings of their communities that were not so visible and tangible without mapping. As an outcome, Jung hopes “Mapping Communities” project creates a community map of what is ‘understood’ and ‘known’ rather than what is merely 'seen.'

Robin Oppenheimer, Ph. C.

Lecturer, Part Time
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciencesrobino2@uw.edu
I.C.B.L.R. Fellow 2010-2011

Project: Community Media Production

Robin Oppenheimer will teach a new IAS course called Community Media Production in Spring 2011 as part of the new Media and Communications Studies program. The goal of this course is to teach students basic digital video production skills in a real-life community-based collaboration with local non-profit organizations. By partnering with UWB’s Community-Based Learning and Scholarship Office (CBLS), student teams will work directly with local non-profits’ staff to research, write, direct, shoot, edit and produce a short advocacy video that supports the mission of the organization. They will learn about diverse community services provided by local non-profit organizations, as well as the basic economics and potential real-world applications of electronic media production. This class will also help the CBLS Office’s partner non-profits learn more about using communications tools. Staff will gain experience in electronic media production, exhibition, and distribution processes through their contact with the students.

Bryan White, Ph. D.

Bryan White is creating a community-based curriculum for his human anatomy class that will reflect on the nature of science without taking away from the scientific content of an upper level science course. By partnering with local middle school and elementary school classrooms, UWB students will bring human organs into classrooms and lead small group discussions, asking for student observations and hypotheses, and reflecting on the nature of science throughout. In addition, UWB students and partnering students will develop investigations on anatomy topics that interest partnering students, for example: What predicts when you lose a tooth? What is the fastest way to increase heart rate? Groups of students will work together to make hypotheses, develop experiments, generate data, and form conclusions while at the same time consider what it means to be a scientist. The goal is to help UWB students and partnering students to think of themselves as scientists and practice the habits of science.

Dan Jacoby, Ph. D.

The arts of public finance and budgeting involve financial and economic analysis. These arts build on constituent skills in microeconomics and accounting so as to encourage government and other organizations to be efficient and effective in their use of scarce resources. By saying that these tools are arts rather than sciences we admit to a certain level of judgment in their application because costs and benefits can never be fully revealed. However, without some accepted tools enabling comparison and evaluation, politics would likely be reduced to raw power. We’ll seek community sponsors who will involve us in some aspect of their budgeting process that will enable students not only to develop technical skills, but also to learn from the community what impact their expertise has upon the people served. Through this intermediation we expect to increase students’ appreciation for the benefits of formal evaluation as well as sensitivity to its limits. Students will be asked to write up an analysis of exactly these considerations with respect to the project they have undertaken. That is, they will be asked, 1) What tools of analysis were used? 2) What tools of analysis should have been used and why? 3) Did your involvement with the community demonstrate specific weaknesses in formal budgetary evaluation? 4) If so, were those limitations so severe that the community would have been better off without using any formal tools of analysis? 5) Define the areas in which the critical judgments of experts are crucial, and what background one needs to make those judgments.